Angels of Detroit by Christopher Hebert Page B

house. He hadn’t spent much time there since he was a child. Once both his parents were dead, he’d lost touch not just with Abuela but also with his cousins and aunts and uncles, all of whom claimed they couldn’t afford to make it to town for the services. That day he saw Constance sitting on the porch next door and went over to introduce himself.
    “I’m thinking about moving in,” he’d said.
    Constance had rocked back in her chair and scratched her armpit. “I’m not going to try to stop you.”
    And that was the moment Michael Boni began to wonder if maybe the block hadn’t been big enough for Constance and his grandmother to share.
    Constance hadn’t gone to the funeral. But her son Clifford had, a black man dressed like a WASP accountant in khakis and a button-up. For two hours, he and Michael Boni were the only living bodies in that cold, curtained parlor, and as they left the funeral home afterward, Clifford took Michael Boni aside and shook his hand with a double clasp, as if he were greeting a foreign dignitary.
    “Your grandmother was a wonderful lady,” Clifford said. “We went shopping together almost every week.”
    There was something about the man that made Michael Boni want to behave badly.
    “You kept her in pozole,” he said.
    Clifford’s grip grew firmer. “Someone had to.”
    It was a mystery to Michael Boni why Clifford remained in the neighborhood instead of joining the genuine WASP accountants in Bloomfield Hills. And why he was willing to move Constance to such a wretched place. Except it turned out that Clifford wasn’t an accountant at all. He made his actual living selling discount cell phones, and this neighborhood was all he could afford, having to support not just himself and his wife but also his mother, his daughter, and her two children. The daughter and her two girls lived with him, too, in histiny three-bedroom rowhouse with a neat bed of flowers. All that was missing was the white picket fence.

    One damp morning in late April, after Michael Boni had been living in his grandmother’s house for about a month, he was standing at his workbench, planing away at a piece of oak, and he happened to look up. Through the foggy window he saw Constance in the empty lot across the street, wearing a purple floral housedress beneath a gray cardigan sweater, black rain boots reaching past her hem. The boots were so bulky, they made it look as if she didn’t have legs, as if the muddy earth were in the process of swallowing her whole. A cloudy plastic milk jug hung heavily from her fingers. Constance was staring at the ground, turning in a slow, halting circle, as if looking for something she’d lost.
    She seemed so old and so confused that Michael Boni decided to go out and help her. But just as he was brushing the wood shavings from his sleeves, Constance started back to her house. That was the last he saw of her that day.
    But the next morning, at almost exactly the same time, she was back, standing in the same spot in the empty lot. Wearing the same dress, same sweater, same rain boots, even though the ground had dried overnight. And with the same milk jug in hand, Constance turned in the same slow circle. But this time Michael Boni noticed something spilling from the jug, splashing from the earth, onto her boots. She looked like a homeless shaman performing some kind of mystic ceremony for ancient ghosts. Michael Boni’s first thought was of Mr. Childs and his departed Triumph. His second thought was dementia. Constance was losing her marbles, and Michael Boni’s thoughts wandered to the conversation in which he got to break the news to Clifford.
    “Your mother’s a wonderful lady,” he’d say, clutching the man’s hand with two of his own. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her whenyou’re not around. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you she’s batshit crazy.”

    Constance repeated her ritual every day that week: purple dress, rain boots, milk jug,